You’ve Got Mel

The long, hilarious career of the filmmaker, comedian, actor, and performer Mel Brooks has been documented before, but never quite like it has been on the new box set “The Incredible Mel Brooks: An Irresistible Collection of Unhinged Comedy.” While previous career retrospectives have focussed on Brooks’s films, this collection assembles odds and ends from around the margins of his career, ranging from classic inteviews with Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson to sitcom appearances on shows such as “Mad About You” to rarities such as the 1978 parody newsmagazine “Peeping Times” and Brooks’s teaser trailer for the 1962 Italian film “My Son, the Hero.”

The set will be released today. While we are pleased to offer the exclusive clip above—it’s a snippet from a 1981 British documentary in which Brooks reflects on his early years, explains his relationship with his mother, and generally acts the tummler—we are doubly pleased that Brooks agreed to discuss the new collection.

As part of the release for this set, there are three hundred signed copies. Why did you pick that number?

That’s a good question. Well, you know. I sign things. I’ll sign a record. I’ll sign a movie, a DVD. I figure I’m usually good for about a hundred and fifty. After that, my signature begins to skew. I don’t know if I’m unconsciously angry at the process or what, but instead of “Mel Brooks,” I’m suddenly “Mel Gibson.” So here in my office, I figure that if I stopped calls, I could do about fifty a day, take me about a week. Plus, if you do many more than that, what’s the point? If there’s a thousand signed sets, who wants them?

You could sign a thousand and then people will want the unsigned ones.

Right. On eBay, someone can sell an unsigned Mel Brooks box set for more than the signed set. I may do that myself.

And these are all really signed by hand? Or do you have an autopen, like the President?

No, all signed by me. I called him to see about the autopen but he’s using it.

Let’s talk about some of the rare content on this set. It opens with the “Hitler Rap,” which you made after “To Be or Not to Be,” in the early eighties.

There are all these beautiful, incredible women and fantastic choreography. I think I preceded most actual rap. But for some reason it wasn’t played on the air. Maybe it was too risqué. These days it could be on ABC.

There’s also the pilot, mostly forgotten, of “Peeping Times,” which was a late-seventies spoof of “60 Minutes.” David Letterman was one of the reporters.

That was a really daring show. They were really trying something. Rudy De Luca and Barry Levinson, who had co-written “Silent Movie” and “High Anxiety” with me, created it. I think it only ran one week.

In your “Peeping Times” segment you play Hitler again. All in all, over the course of your career, there’s a pretty high Hitler rate.

I work well with the man. The thing I always thought is that you can’t get on a soapbox with these guys. I’m sure if I got on a soapbox with Hitler, or with Torquemada, I’d lose. But telling such bad borscht-belt jokes defeats them. Nobody can endure ridicule. They knew that when they took power, that if the people laugh at them they’ll be toppled very quickly.

Because “The Producers” is so beloved now, it’s probably hard for people to recover the sense of it as something so controversial.

Let me tell you a little story. It was opening night for “The Producers” at the St. James Theatre, on April 17, 2001. The curtain goes up a little earlier so the critics could get their reviews. The first act does very well. The second act we do “Springtime for Hitler.” A very big man—drunk, as it was—comes storming up the aisle yelling and cursing. I grab this guy. I don’t want there to be a riot. I don’t want the show to be stopped. I quickly bring him into the lobby and he says to me, “This is a disgrace. How dare you? How dare you? Do you know all the Jews that were killed? I served in World War Two. I was in Germany fighting. This is an outrage.” I said to him, “I was in Germany, too. I was in the Army. I didn’t see you there. Lemme buy you a drink.” I calmed him down. I explained the premise all over again: how Bialystock and Bloom wanted a flop rather than a hit and this was the worst and least appealing idea they could think of. Then when I did the movie version of the musical, I got hundreds of letters. I answered every single one of them, explained why I needed Hitler to create a flop, because I’m a Jew and I was sensitive to the concerns.

Most people think of you as a movie director primarily, but the fact is that you started on TV, in the glory days of American TV sketch comedy.

There’s a segment on the set called “In the Beginning: The Caesar Years.” It’s a reunion of the writers from the Sid Caesar show “Your Show of Shows.” Most of my early work was done there, and it was glorious. Max Liebman University, we called it—he was the producer. I would have been a comic many year before, but Sid was such a perfect vehicle for my comedy passion. As a writer, you hope the comic you write for will meet the material. With Sid, he raised it. Everything we wrote, he found what was funny in it, and he took it to a higher level. And that group of writers was just incredible: me, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon. Larry never missed. He was a comedy sharpshooter.

One of my fondest memories is Neil Simon being afraid to walk with me because he didn’t know what I would do in his company. I loved Neil. We used to call him “Doc.” He was so shy. We never knew what he was talking about, really: he would whisper to Carl and Carl would translate. “Doc’s got it!” he would say. Doc and Larry and I would hang out, get lunch. One day we were walking up Fifty-seventh Street and there were three nuns in habits coming toward us. Neil knew that I was going to say something. I said, “O.K., the skit’s over. Get out of costume.”

Do you think comedy has changed much since you were a young writer and performer?

I don’t see it that way. I don’t think there’s any philosophical road that changes and curves. I think it’s a simply matter of gifted people. Either somebody’s really funny or they’re not. They decide what’s funny, what’s au courant. Larry David has this wonderful disrespectful show that works. Louis C.K. is fabulously funny, as is Lewis Black. There’s no philosophical road, no psychological road. I just believe that society has these odd wacky guys who are born with a gift to really see things a certain way.

We shouldn’t give people the impression that the set doesn’t deal with your movies at all. At the end of each disc, there’s a segment called “Mel and His Movies,” where you discuss your film work.

I share secrets, insights, what excited me when I was making them, the pressures I faced, how I continued when I got discouraged. For example, when I was making “Blazing Saddles,” I was working with Slim Pickens. And I said to him, “Look, you’ve done a thousand movies. I have done three or four. Is there any piece of advice you could offer me?”

He said, “Sit down.”

I said, “What? You want me to sit down? The advice is that serious?”

He said, “No, that’s the advice. Sit down any time you see a chair. Otherwise as you’re working you don’t realize you’re on your feet for twenty hours. You’re more tired than you know. Get off your feet and sit down.” So that’s the kind of real-world information you need if you’re thinking about getting into the movie business.

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